Chapter 1- Reborn
"Hah... Hah... Hah..."
It was a windy day. The sound of it whistling across the vast, empty plain. The weather was cold, the clouds accumulating in the sky as if rain was threatening to fall and wash away all the chaos that occurred.
However, for one reason or another, rain never ca. Everything that happened that day... was never washed away. It all sank into the soil, seeping into the very core of that land. Even after millions were lost, and more were ruined beyond repair, and even after all the pain and suffering... Not even rain wanted to wash it all away and make people forget.
They were all gone. There was nothing remaining of them but their limp bodies, their dismbered limbs, their blood that flowed like rivers across the battlefield.
In that rather empty place stood two silhouettes. One holding a large sword, and the other simply on their knees, breathing heavily as they held their weapon by their side for support. Their body was completely covered in bloody wounds, with a particularly grueso one running from their neck down to their side.
The man was barely able to breathe, let alone remain conscious. His eyes were tired, weak, yet filled with endless rage. He stared left, then right, recognizing many of the faces of the dead around him.
"Why are you not giving up?" The standing man asked, staring at his enemy, who could barely even breathe. "Everyone is dead, Zen."
"..."
"I killed everything you worked to achieve. I killed your comrades, your friends, your wife, your kids, and everyone you ever t and ever knew in your life." The man said in a tone so eerie and so cold that for a second, one would think he was just ntioning random things he did in his day-to-day life. "What more is there to fight for?"
He didn’t understand why his enemy refused to give up. He had made him watch as every single person he ever loved died before his eyes. He watched them all disappear from his life while he was powerless and unable to stop it.
That would break the spirit of any sane man. It would ruin them beyond repair. It would break their minds and turn them into hollow husks of what they used to be. Yet, this man didn’t stop fighting, and he didn’t give up. He didn’t look like he was intending to even drop the weapon and succumb to his deep wounds.
"Hah... Hah... Ptuh..." The man, hearing all of that, didn’t reply imdiately as he spat out a mouthful of blood. Then, he looked up, and for the first ti in a while, the standing man was able to look into his enemy’s eyes. The eyes of a man who lost everything.
However, shockingly, all he saw in them was... emptiness. He didn’t see sadness, he didn’t see hopelessness, and he didn’t see the horror and despair he expected to see. Instead, it was like he stared into the eyes of a dead corpse.
"What are you waiting... for?" The dying man asked with a hoarse voice. "End ... Finish what you started."
"..."
"You have won, and I have lost." He said as he looked at the soil beneath his hands, as he gripped a handful tightly.
"... You’ve always been like that." The man said with a rather disappointed voice. "Soone who irritates even at death’s door."
"Hahaha..."
"You have grown soft... So soft and pathetic. It disgusts that I even have to coat my sword in your blood, Zen."
"And you have grown to be the demon I always knew you were going to be. Poetic, isn’t it, Rein?"
Those words made Rein’s eyes flare for a second with imnse anger before he instantly cald down.
"Rot in hell, Zen. That’s where you belong, you and your pathetic people. I hope it was worth the effort of opposing ." He said as he stepped forward and put his sword against Zen’s neck. The latter stared up and, with an emotionless smile, gripped the blade tightly with his hand, drawing blood out of it that ran down the blade.
Then, he said.
"I will see you down there soon."
*Swish*
Those words echoed in the empty battlefield before they died down eventually, leaving nothing behind but the silence that took over this hollow place.
For an unknown amount of ti after... Rein stood there silently. Nobody knew if he was basking in the glory of his win... or reminiscing about a past long gone.
***
It was completely dark for Zen. The world around hum was blindingly dark. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t even ’feel’. It was as if he was suspended in the nothingness for eternity, with its harsh coldness, endless pain.
However, for so reason, he was still conscious and aware. He didn’t know where he went, but he rembered that he had died.
’It’s... so dark...’ He frowned as he floated in that endless abyss. ’Where... am I? Is this... hell?’
He asked himself, knowing fully well that his imagination of hell was definitely not this way. For an unknown amount of ti, he floated in that abyss, not knowing or sensing the ti that passed. He was so numb that even his own body could barely move.
But, at so point, and at a random point, Zen saw sothing... A white dot in the distance. He frowned.
’What’s... that?’ He focused on it. That was when the dot started growing in size exponentially. From the size of a rice grain, to the size of a ball, and then bigger and bigger as it approached him.
Zen couldn’t really move, so he had to watch that phenonon happen before his eyes. In a matter of seconds, the dot beca a giant white light that consud the entire world, and before Zen knew it, he was also consud by it.
For a mont, he couldn’t see anything as the light was too blinding. However, eventually, that light started fading as he finally... felt sothing.
His eyes slowly opened as he heard the sound of birds chirping.
’Wait... hear?’ He frowned. ’I can hear...’
His eyes shot open as he looked left and right, clearly in shock. His heart was racing, and his mind was in chaos. There, he saw the rays of the sun casting on the room through the window. He saw a tree looming outside, swaying with the faintest of winds.
He rose from the bed and looked around him, all disheveled and confused, as if he was still in a dream.
Blinking a few tis, he finally exhaled.
"This..." He muttered. "My room?" He asked himself.
The familiar scenery, the hard, old bed that creaked with every movent, the broken window, and the sll of old wood. That was his room when he was a kid.
"Why... Why am I here? Is this a dream?" He asked himself. But, he could tell... This was far too realistic to be a dream.
Slowly leaving the bed, that was when he noticed sothing else. His vision was so much lower than what he was used to... He was shorter.
As he looked down, a realization struck him.
"No way..."
Without wasting another second, he rushed to the closest mirror he could find and there... He looked at his reflection.
All he could see was a young boy... No more than 16 years of age.
"What the hell... Why am I younger?" He asked in disbelief as he touched his face. Everything felt so confusing, almost like a weird fever dream. But, it couldn’t be a dream; he had lived until he was 50 years of age, and he had experienced so many things. How could all of that be a re dream?
’I rember what happened vividly. Everything... I rember it.’ He frowned. ’Does that an?’
He slowly looked up as he reached a rather completely ridiculous conclusion.
"I went back in ti?" He frowned.
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